The time for all to tone down the explosive rhetoric has come, hasn’t it?

Despite the rocky terrain of print media, The Baltic Times Magazine, the Baltic’s longest enduring print publication in English – we have been around 32 years! – is continuing its journey, beckoning you to flick through the new magazine issue and devote some time for reading the insightful commentaries of our local and international analysts, the self-introductory articles of the great Lithuanian and Latvian municipalities, like Siauliai, Kedainiai, Druskininkai, Anyksciai or Latvia’s Bauska, or about the Raudondvaris Manor in the Kaunas district.

Please meet our amazing cover hero, Virgeda Jackaite, the new CEO of Civinity, one of the leading building maintenance and engineering solutions groups in the Baltics.

Construction of engineering systems and facility management might still look to some like an-all-male industry – all about bolts and screws. But for Virgeda Jackaite it is all about something different – people. And then comes expansion!

Of course, politically, all eyes are still set on the world’s war zones in the Middle East and Ukraine.  Ligita Sinusiene, a Lithuanian teacher at Palanga Senoji Gimnazija (Palanga Old Gymnasium), likes to repeat “kids are kids”, but the Ukrainian children she has been teaching Lithuanian for over two years now have been tugging at her heartstrings since the first day. “

She confessed to The Baltic Times Magazine she was astounded and left speechless when one of her pupils asked her: ““Teacher, have you ever seen a bomb flying towards you?”

Is the world headed for something more horrendous and irreversible? The time for all to tone down the explosive rhetoric has come, hasn’t it?

This year, Lithuania is in a record-high election season – Gitanas Nauseda, the incumbent President, extended his stay in Daukantas Square for another five years, the European Parliament elections will be held in the Baltics on June 8-9, when the conveyor belts of our printing house will be churning out our magazine.

And, then, in early October, the general election is held!

Undoubtedly, everyone’s eyes are already on the presidential election in the United States on November 5. Reflecting on it, our analyst of American descent, Kestutis Girnius, states in his commentary: “There has been no presidential election in the last century in which both candidates are flawed, vain and self-centred old men, facing the challenge of leading the US when its global dominance is being challenged.”

I wish America could rise to its previous indisputable prowess again – a policeman is better than none. But will America have a President after November 5, 2024? God forbid, if none of the two old guys, but Mr Chaos wins!

Anyway, you may be on the way for your escape to the Baltics, a fabulous place to visit and enjoy the tranquillity, the lush greenery, sauntering along the cobbled streets of Vilnius, Riga and Tallin or on the local Baltic beaches, like Palanga, or trekking in the hinterlands!

Linas Jegelevicius

The Baltic Times Magazine editor-in-chief